Mars Sample-Return Goal Drives NASA's Exploration of Red Planet

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The next steps in NASA's Mars exploration strategy should build
toward returning Martian rocks and dirt to Earth to search for
signs of past life, a new report by the space agency's Red Planet
planning group finds.

The report, released today (Sept. 25) by the
Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG), lays out a series of
options that NASA could employ to get pieces of the Red Planet in
scientists' hands here on Earth. The space agency is now mulling
those options and could announce its chosen path by early next
year, when the White House releases its proposed budget for
fiscal year 2014.

"The first public release of what plans, you know, we
definitively have would not be until the president presents that
budget to Congress in February of 2013," John Grunsfeld,
associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate,
told reporters today.

The MPPG was instructed to consider NASA's newly constrained
fiscal situation and the priorities laid out by the U.S. National
Research Council's Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which was
released last year. President Barack Obama's directive that the
agency get astronauts to the vicinity of
Mars by the mid-2030s was another factor, NASA officials
said.

The MPPG's focus on sample-return should thus come as no
surprise. It was a top priority of the Decadal Survey, and
sample-return could help spur and work in concert with NASA's
plans for human exploration of Mars, Grunsfeld said. [ 7
Biggest Mysteries of Mars ]

" Sample-return
represents the best opportunity to find symmetry technologically
between the programs," he said. "Sending a mission to go to Mars
and return a sample looks a lot like sending a crew to Mars and
returning them safely."

Humans could even be involved in the sample-return process,
according to the MPPG report. Astronauts aboard NASA's
Orion capsule, which is currently under development, could
intercept the Martian sample in deep space, secure it in a
contained environment, and bring it safely down to Earth.

"It is taking advantage of the human architecture, because we
anticipate it will be there," Grunsfeld said. "And it potentially
solves an issue of, when we return samples, somewhere we have to
make sure that the samples are completely contained so there's no
chance — remote as it may be — that there is something on Mars
that could contaminate Earth."

Exactly when a Martian sample could come down to Earth remains up
in the air. But NASA is considering launching the first enabling
mission along this path in 2018, or perhaps 2020, Grunsfeld said.
A complicating factor is that NASA has just $800 million or so to
work with for the project through 2018.

That's "not enough to encompass the rover options that we talked
about," said MPPG team lead Orlando Figueroa. "That drives you to
either launching an orbiter first, or delaying to the next
opportunity, 2020, to start with a rover."

The report also provides a variety of options for gathering and
returning Red Planet samples.

For example, it could all be done with a single launch, which
would carry a soil-collecting rover, a vehicle that would blast
the samples off the Martian surface and an orbiter for sample
rendezvous and return. Or these payloads could be divided among
two or three launches, to spread cost and risk around, Figueroa
said.

The MPPG report discusses lofting the single-shot mission as
early as 2024, aboard NASA's huge Space Launch System rocket.
NASA wants the SLS to make its first test flight by 2017 and to
be ready to carry crews by 2021.

NASA's robotic Mars exploration strategy has already begun
shifting from "follow the water" — exemplified by NASA's Spirit
and Opportunity rovers — to searching for habitable environments,
which the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover is currently doing in the
Red Planet's Gale Crater.

Sample-return is the logical next step in NASA's unmanned
activities at Mars, Figueroa said.

"This is really the search for evidence of past life," he said.
"And the options that we are putting forth is, What are the
options that NASA could have available to pursue it in the most
aggressive way possible?"

NASA has two robotic Mars missions on the docket before the first
step toward sample-return would launch. The Maven orbiter is
slated to blast off next year to study the Red Planet's
atmosphere, while a mission called InSight will launch in 2016 to
probe Mars' core.